m. A common obsession is that a person may be scared that he or she will become infected with germs and become ill. This person may frequently wash their hands and surrounding objects to an extreme. A person who suffers from compulsions believes that if they do not perform a series of events something will happen. Compulsive people usually realize the senselessness of the things that they do but cannot control them. In very severe cases a compulsion may be a person’s main daily activity and in doing this activity over and over again may prevent them from living a normal life. A person who suffers from generalized anxiety may experience hot or cold spells and they may be very irritable and hard to get along with. This may happen because they worry that something will happen to them. These symptoms may last for periods of six months or longer. Physical symptoms include muscle tension, nausea and a rapid heart rate. A person who suffers from a phobia has a constant fear of objects or situations that they could come across, for example the fear of spiders. A phobic person, if forced to face their fear, may panic or become ill. Although nearly all people have at least one or two phobias it is not considered a disorder until it seriously interferes with a person’s everyday life. Dissociative disorder, or psychogenic amnesia, is a disorder that affects a person’s ability to remember his or her past. A person who suffers from the type of dissociative disorder called fugue, not only forgets his or her past, but also travels from their community and begins a new life somewhere else as a different person. A familiar type of this disorder is multiple personality disorder in which a person may have two or more completely separate personalities and one personality will dominate during certain situations. A somatoform disorder is a disorder in which a person experiences physical symptoms with no expla...
